


Biscuit Tin

by jellybeany



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21571957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeany/pseuds/jellybeany
Summary: A butterfly flaps its wings, and all that.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 181





	1. Chapter 1

Draco sat in the common room in the late evening, pretending to read, as he watched Potter, who was also pretending to read. Lounging in a wingback chair, he turned a page in his Advanced Potions textbook every so often to keep up the appearance of reading. Slyly, in the space of a blink, he glanced at the large gilt mirror hanging beside the portrait of three dormice having a tea party. In its reflection he could see Harry patently watching him from his position on the sofa, surrounded by sweet wrappers. Potter’s attempt at pretending to read was much less convincing, in Draco’s opinion. For one thing, the book was upside-down, and secondly it was in Pamphylian Greek. 

They had watched and watched each other all year, never admitting that they were, and Draco dreamed of doing something more. Of collecting a fistful of mud from the Quidditch pitch on a rainy Tuesday and slinging it in Potter’s face. Of wrenching an apple from the mouth of one of the roasting pigs at Sunday dinner and lobbing it at the back of Potter’s head. 

Not to hurt him. Of course not. Just to get his attention. Muggleborns got terribly offended about things like broken bones, forgetting that with Skele-gro potion, non-magical injuries could be healed within a moment. There was no need to take a simple conversation starter so seriously. 

Not that Draco could do such a thing as sling mud in Potter’s face or trip him up in a corridor. He was on probation, as his dear Headmistress had reminded him in her office at the beginning of the year (something to do with a record of consistently breaking curfew, physically assaulting other students, and a campaign involving malicious badges? Draco had no recollection), before coughing up a fur ball into her tin of shortbread biscuits. 

No, she hadn’t done that, though Pansy would surely have laughed if she had heard him say it. But she wasn’t here. He had to write it to her in a letter and imagine her laughing instead. 

He had had to take a different tactic to get Potter’s attention: completely ignoring him. This involved carefully watching Potter to make sure that he was upset at being ignored. It was working so far. 

Potter flung his book aside. Draco glanced at the mirror again; Potter in the reflection was now staring straight at him through his silly glasses and wetting his lips and opening his mouth to say something, which Draco took as his cue to leave. 

_Play hard to get_ , Draco thought to himself, running up the stairs to the dormitory two at a time. _Always leave them wanting more._ This had the perfect potential for pissing Potter off, and if he kept it up, he might find himself pleasantly slammed against a wall and ravished one of these days. He certainly hoped so. 

He let the arched door swing shut behind him, breathing out a laugh, and threw a rudimentary locking spell at it. Nothing Potter couldn’t counter, but just fiddly enough to get him riled up. He could hear Potter’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Draco was weighing up whether it would be funnier for him to hide or to put all his weight against the door when Potter tried to open it, when… Potter was already in the room.

“You can’t Apparate inside Hogwarts!” said Draco, appalled.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” said Harry. 

The doorknob rattled, and Draco found himself yanked into the bedroom’s adjoining bathroom. Potter shoved a hand over Draco’s mouth, which proved that whoever this Potter was, he was still an idiot. Any witch or wizard worth their salt would have cast a Langlock to hush him up, and anyone dangerous would have disarmed him immediately. This Potter, wherever he had come from, had him pressed up bodily against the door. He looked very worried and, sadly, like he wasn’t thinking about ravishing.

He _looked_ ravishing, Draco found himself noticing, as his heart did a painful little trot up to his mouth. Potter’s hair had grown longer and curled around his face, like some sort of overgrown cherub. He was dressed in smart, well-fitting black robes, crested with a red and purple insignia that blurred itself when Draco looked directly at it. His body was a warm, firm press. Draco wondered whether his heartbeat was audible. It felt like it was echoing off the tiles. 

The other Potter burst into the dormitory, huffing and puffing.

“Malfoy!” 

Potter in the bathroom closed his eyes and thumped his head against the wall beside Draco’s. Draco took pity on him. He must have got hold of an illegal time-turner somehow, gone back in time, and doubtless fucked it up. Draco knew that time travellers were forbidden to encounter their past or future selves. In fact, time travellers weren’t meant to be seen by anyone. A butterfly flaps its wings, and all that. It was just like Potter to ignore a simple rule and have a catastrophic effect on the entire universe.

“Malfoy, I want to talk to you,” said Potter from outside the bathroom. Potter inside the bathroom let out a soft _“fuck”_ and reached for his wand. Draco decided to intervene, lest anyone be prematurely Obliviated, gently removing the warm hand covering his mouth.

“I’m a little busy right now,” he called.

“Busy? Doing what?” 

Draco couldn’t help but briefly indulge in a thousand-yard stare at this display of obtuseness, expecting the Potter pressing up against him to commiserate, but he was Potter as well, so he didn’t. The hand that had covered his mouth now rested at Draco’s waist. He was watching Draco expectantly, clearly relying on him to save the situation. 

“Taking a shit, Potter, what do you think!” he yelled incredulously. The Potter holding on to him burst out laughing.

“…Are you sure?” 

Draco had to pinch Harry sharply in several places to remind him he was supposed to be quiet, unless he wanted to break the laws of space and time. Potter was shaking, laughing silently with his eyes closed and his mouth open. 

“What do you mean, am I sure?”

“I thought I heard—“

“Stop listening to me in the bathroom, you creep! I think I would know if I’m using the toilet or not!” Draco did his best to sound persecuted. 

There was a pause, during which the Potter in the bathroom whispered in his ear: “I remember having this conversation. It was the day you…“

“I’ll come back later, but I still want to talk to you, Malfoy.” 

This was getting awfully confusing, trying to understand two Potters at the same time. Now they were interrupting each other. The day he what?

“Come back in an hour,” Draco replied distractedly.

“An _hour?_ ” 

The Potter crushed up against him broke into silent giggles again, the childish fool. He chose not to dignify either of them with a response, and waited until he heard the bewildered Potter’s receding footsteps as he left the dormitory. The other Potter listened intently at the door, then exhaled in relief, stepping away from Draco and leaving him cold.

“Explain.” 

“Oh,” said Potter, looking sheepish all of a sudden. “Well, I’ve just, um, popped in for some Ministry business. No, I shouldn’t have said that. It doesn’t matter why I’m here. In fact, let’s pretend I’m not here. God, you look so young.”

Draco didn’t know what to say. But he had never let that stop him before.

“Ministry business,” he repeated. “And I can’t see your badge, which means you’re an Unspeakable. You know that’s a stupid system, along with the fact that not being able to _say_ you’re an Unspeakable makes it obvious that you are one. You should really change that,” he said.

Harry’s eyes quickly filled with such a deep fondness that Draco felt a little overcome. “You always say that,” he smiled.

“No, I don’t.” The smiling stopped.

“No, of course you don’t. I’m not here. I just have to get something from McGonagall’s office and then I’ll be gone. Don’t tell anyone.”

“What thing?” Harry stiffened at this, looking Draco in the eye and then nervously looking away, and Draco’s stomach dropped. It was too good to be true, the Dark Noseless Lord being truly dead. He was bound to have left some kind of fucking bomb or resurrection device or vial of unicorn blood lying around and then gone travelling in time to get it, leaving Harry Potter to save everybody once again. Hadn’t it been enough? Wouldn’t it ever end? 

“And what do you mean, I look young? How can you have fucked up this badly — time-turners can only take you a few hours into the past.”

Harry stopped mumbling about his invisibility cloak, which he had unfolded from a pocket deep inside his robes. Undetectable extension charms were also illegal, and using them to expand pockets just to look slim was an incredibly dandy and un-Potter-like thing to do. It was almost like wherever he lived in the future, he had some fashionable person taking care of his clothing choices for him.

“I’m not using a time-turner,” he said. “Actually, I fell into a time-well.”

Draco didn’t know what a time-well was, but he wasn’t about to let Harry know that. Hang on, “fell”?

“You said you were here on Ministry business!”

“I am! I dropped something into a well by accident while at work and it’s very important that I get it back, and I’m paid by the hour so technically I am on business, and by the way I wasn’t here at all, if anyone asks. Not that they will. I’m pretty sure it landed in the biscuit tin in McGonagall’s office, and I should be able to get there without anyone noticing.” Harry checked his watch, which had no face, and at least fourteen silver dials. He pulled the invisibility cloak around his shoulders and reached for the doorknob. Then stopped.

“I missed you,” he said. 

Draco frowned.

“Am I not… there, in the future?” Was he even alive? He knew Harry couldn’t answer. Telling someone about their own future was strictly against the laws of time. 

“Of course you are,” Harry laughed. “Only, I haven’t seen you since this morning.”

This morning? Perhaps Harry hadn’t lost a dangerous magical artifact capable of resurrecting a murderous megalomaniac, if Draco was still alive. Perhaps everything was going to be fine. But why would Potter miss him if he’d seen him this morning? Whenever this morning happened to be…

He felt an invisible hand touch his cheek. 

“What was it that you lost?” Draco asked.

Harry smiled, one of his slow smiles that he did when he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to or not. Only his head was visible due to the cloak, floating in the air with a copper toilet behind him.

“An engagement ring,” he said guiltily.

Taking advantage of the ridiculous state of affairs, the bizarre turn in conversation, the way Draco had become immobilised by the sudden softness in the atmosphere and curl in his gut, Harry pulled the cloak over his head and disappeared. 

But not before giving him a look imbued with such feeling that Draco thought his heart might collapse under the weight of it. 

When he returned to the common room, present Harry was still there, lying on the sofa in his bobbled Weasley jumper, sucking on the head of a chocolate frog. 

“Hey,” said Potter, craning his head. “I wanted to ask you something, before you run off to the toilet again.” Draco came to sit on the floor by the sofa, demonstrating that he was not about to run off to the toilet again. 

“Do you…” He swallowed. “Together. If you want, we could— do you want to go to—“

Draco decided to kiss him, partly to put himself out of the misery of listening to Harry try to form a coherent sentence, but mostly because he knew that it was what they both wanted, and it would be rude to wait any longer.

Harry returned the kiss, opening up. He tasted sweet, and nervous, and willing. 

“—Hogsmeade,” Harry mumbled a quarter of an hour later. 

“I do,” said Draco.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry climbed into bed clumsily, thanking Circe his partner was such a deep sleeper. His partner swiftly sat up, switched the bedside light on (temporarily blinding them both), and crossed his arms.

“And what time do you call this?”

Fuck. 

“Bedtime,” Harry tried. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“Oh no you don’t. What kept you at work so late?” 

Harry tried his second best stalling tactic: kissing. He propped himself up on an elbow, threw his glasses over the other side of the room, and pulled Draco down. 

It worked for a short while. Draco’s lips migrated to his cheek, and then his neck, leaving hot, open presses over his skin. And then he cruelly pulled away, holding his affection hostage in return for answers.

“I can’t tell you,” Harry mumbled, reaching out. 

“Of course you can’t, and the fact that you can never tell me about work makes it completely obvious that you work for the Unspeakables,” Malfoy said. He said this at least once a week.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Harry said.

Malfoy switched the light off and settled back down under the covers, letting Harry run a hand up and down his side, and shifting forward until they were nose to nose, feeling their magic spark off each other and create a fierce, tugging heat.

“You didn’t, for example, lose anything down a time-well, did you?” Draco murmured. Harry’s eyes widened.

“I…”

“Because, hypothetically, if you had gone back in time, my darling oaf…” He brushed a hand across the hair on Harry’s forehead, revealing the lightning bolt scar. “…and told someone in the past about why you were there, that person would still know. Did you think of that?”

“Oh,” Harry said. 

“Yes, oh.”

“You never told me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to,” Draco chided.

“Since when do you ever do what you’re supposed to? You put the milk in _before_ the cereal, for Christ’s sake.”

“That’s so I pour the right amount of cereal. It’d be too much milk otherwise. It makes perfect sense.”

“But the cereal floats, so it’s not like you can see— look, I’m not having this conversation again.”

They lapsed into silence.

“Did you find it?” Draco asked eventually.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry said. “Go to sleep, and please don’t look in any of my pockets.” Draco laughed. 

“I love you.”

“Goodnight,” Harry insisted.

“I’ll look forward to my surprise tomorrow then. I’m sure it’ll be very surprising. Unexpected, even. Out of the blue.”

“You complete twat. Will you marry me, then?”

“I’m afraid I can neither confirm nor— oh, don’t look at me like that, of course I will!”

The course of true love, and time-travel, and Harry’s life in general, never did run smooth. But it all worked out in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a cheesy line...


End file.
